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I really don't know what good solutions are to the mental health problems. Even if we're able to classify more disorders that can categorize people as having the potential to snap, is that reason enough to lock them up? Obviously the best solution is to be able to treat every possible mental health disorder, whether it's strictly psychological or biological, but I still think we're a very long way from having that kind of medical capability. And it's possible that life will always throw us curveballs, in the sense that perhaps we just aren't supposed to be able to fix everything. Maybe that's part of nature's balance.

Maybe you're right that people can't just snap. But, people are just biological machines. Even machines can break, and so maybe sometimes people's brain can just break and they snap in such a way that wouldn't be predictable through genetics or psychology.

But ultimately, how common are these mass murders, really? For example, when considering the amount of flights that take place over any time period, the amount of crashes that occur are extraordinarily rare. I mean, don't get me wrong, any senseless loss of life does seem like too much, but for now, there's only so much we can do to make planes any safer than they already are. On that same token, maybe there's not much we can really do to prevent mass murders from happening any less often than they already do.

Perhaps that isn't a good analogy, but I guess this discussion is just more difficult than I thought it would be since I don't believe that we can cure or prevent everything. Years ago, my girlfriend died of stomach cancer. She was only 20 years old. Had a full ride to Cornell University. Was incredibly attractive (Brazilian!) and very intelligent. Amazing young woman. Far too young to get stomach cancer. It's extremely rare in young people. But she got it, and it killed her. My oldest childhood friend was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver a few years back. His wife and their unborn child were also killed. One of my grandpa's died far too young from ALS, an extremely rare disease. My other grandpa was fairly young and relatively healthy and had some type of clot or something in his brain that burst, and he died four days later.

Each one of these scenarios involves something that could potentially have been prevented by more advanced knowledge of medicine, or by eliminating alcohol, etc. But the point I'm trying to make is that, if it isn't one thing, it's something else. If you beat cancer, you could still die in a car crash on your way home from being discharged from the hospital. It's f-kin' tragic, but that's life.

Speaking of psychological tests to buy a gun license, I know it isn't feasible but I think socieity would evolve to a better path by having that for every person possible. Like all who enter high school grade of education. Then again many sociopaths have high intelligence and decent charisma so they would probably just break into the archieves and burn them. :P

As for the mass shootings, other than the synchronicity of the perpetrators' loneliness is there anything else? I think there's a very low probability that people just snap and go nuts. As for the technical details involved I'm sure they are a lot more complicated than simple gun laws, video games or loneliness.

Qwertyman: Each one of these scenarios involves something that could potentially have been prevented by more advanced knowledge of medicine, or by eliminating alcohol, etc. But the point I'm trying to make is that, if it isn't one thing, it's something else.

I don't think this is a good reason at all to cease enquiry into medicine, biology, psychiatry, etc. It's true that the list of possible outcomes will always infinitely exceed our solutions, but nobody is dying from smallpox. Nor does a broken leg mean your inevitable doom. Scientific pursuits produce good things that make our lives better. I bet a peasant from medieval France would have loved the opportunity to live long enough to die from ALS.

What surprises me is how (still) the most prosperous country in the world continues to be absolutely inept at taking care of its citizens. Even if patients can afford proper treatment, education about mental health is sorely lacking, possibly preventing these individuals from seeking care in the first place. Increased surveillance, better standards of practice, education removing social stigma, more funding for research; these are more important topics than clip sizes, or Call of Duty.

There are no certainties in pursing this path, I agree. But I think we owe it to the families of the deceased, past and future, to address the actual issues that tore their lives apart.

Qwertyman: Fenixp, I don't really know how to respond to your posts, but I'll do my best.

Actually... Thank you for that.

Qwertyman: You understand nothing about forensics, apparently.

True. I still do think, however, that proper gun control leads to less guns in circulation.

Qwertyman: And for your second point, all I can say is: That's what I call the pussy point of view. Not trying to be a jerk, but as a man, I'd rather have a chance to fight then just assume that I won't be able to fight back.

You say you're a realist. I happen to think that of myself as well, and 'pussy' and 'man' don't come into play when you're trying to think that way. You've got military training, I can understand your point of view slightly, altho I don't necessarily agree with it. For one, I'm a programmer. I don't have your reflexes and even if I had a gun (and I actually do know how to use one,) there's a fair probability that I just wouldn't be fast enough in a situation where someone tries to rob me at gunpoint.

But there's another side to this issue entirely: Let me start off by the fact that I have never been held at a gunpoint, so take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt. I am a stoic, mostly I don't react to situations by fear or panic, I usually stay calm and try to work my way towards a solution. And in a situation where someone would aim a gun at me, I would not really thing about 'ohgoshI'mgoingtodie' all that much, I'd just think 'Ok, I'll give this guy my money and he'll go away.'

Why would I give him money as opposed to fight back you ask? Well, I never carry too much cash or valuables on me at any given time for one. Another thing is: Having 'balls' just seems incredibly selfish to me. If I were to defend myself, chances are I'll get hurt or killed. If I got hurt, I couldn't work for several days, a week or more, getting me and my wife into a fairly bad financial situation, not to mention all the stress involved from her side. If I were to get killed, I'll leave a fairly unhappy widow around. I don't think she'd give a shit about me being manly and having balls in either of those situations.

So basically, you said you've got a family. If you got shot because you want to prove how much of a man you are, well I'd think that you're quite a jerk. Then again, me-programmer, you-exmilitary. But that's just how I see it, and it seems to be quite a practical point of view as far as I'm concerned (I mean obviously, it's my point of view.)

Qwertyman: Again, I'd rather have a chance. I'm not a pussy. I'm not just going to assume that the criminals will win and I will lose no matter what. I will decide my own fate, thank you very much. That is and should always be my right as an American.

To be fair, I don't really blame you there all that much. It doesn't hurt to be safe. But it doesn't change the fact that chances of the gun actually helping anything are incredibly slim - that's not really 'view of a pussy,' that's another practical view.

Qwertyman: A) Wow, how did you ever come up with that? You do realize that the animal still has to be killed, correct? This isn't StarTrek; We do not have replicators (yet). So what happens if the day comes that you can no longer just buy meat from a butcher? It sounds to me like you have a carefree worldview resembling that of a child. How old are you? I'm not saying that to be a jerk, I just mean that it sounds like you still have some growing up to do. B) I don't disagree that proper training and licensing is a bad idea.

A) Well as far as I know, at least on farms in Czech Republic, animals aren't really shot anymore, they're rendered unconscious and then they get their arteries cut. It's not as costy as bullets. What happens when I can no longer buy meat from a butcher? I don't know, what happens when there's no more breathable oxygen in the atmosphere? People were able to buy meat from a butcher for quite some time now, and I sort of don't really see this trend dying off in the near future. Yeah, situations may arise where this option will no longer be availible. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to live off whatever I can get my hands on then. I'm 23 by the way, so yeah, I've got quite a bit of growing up to do still. B) Well then we agree on the point I deem the most important.

Qwertyman: I don't even understand what you're trying to state here.

I started the argument to basically say that proper and strict gun control is needed, because that's what people seem to be talking now. I never said that guns should be banned. So as I said, we seem to agree on the point I was trying to make in the first place anyway.

iippo: ....Like I stated earlier, by simple kindness and politeness + putting much much more money and attention on mental health care.

This people go on killing spree, because they feel like they are not part of the society, they feel society hates them and they start to hate the society as well. They crave for attention, for recognizion. I AM ALIVE - SEE ME DAMMIT!! Why do you think they kill themselves in the end? ...

Do you think the US is an unkind and unpolite society? I am sure there are many people that fail on a personal level everywhere but most of them do not go killing. You need to have a mental problem too and who knows if it really can be diagnosed in time. Is more money really able to help detecting mental problems earlier?

Nirth: Speaking of psychological tests to buy a gun license, I know it isn't feasible but I think socieity would evolve to a better path by having that for every person possible.

Have you ever done psychological tests? They are quite interesting.

In Finland most men still go to army and there you have to do few simple ones. Later I applied to certain expert position in EU rapid deployment force's (EUBG), but didnt make it in the end - however there was quuuite big pile psychological tests to do and they were quite interesting. Some were done on paper and some were done in group, with couple psychologists watching how you do in group.

I dont think high intelligence will really help you on psychological tests, if they are extensive enough. As I understood it, for example when you do multiple choice tests, same kind of thing is asked several times again and again in a bit different ways - in the end if you try to "play it" and remember how you answered earlier, youre quite likely to botch it.

Ofcourse if youre going to pick option like "I want to join EUBG because" B) I love guns and shooting people - well then there hardly need for deep analyzes :)

Qwertyman: I really don't know what good solutions are to the mental health problems. Even if we're able to classify more disorders that can categorize people as having the potential to snap, is that reason enough to lock them up? Obviously the best solution is to be able to treat every possible mental health disorder, whether it's strictly psychological or biological, but I still think we're a very long way from having that kind of medical capability. And it's possible that life will always throw us curveballs, in the sense that perhaps we just aren't supposed to be able to fix everything. Maybe that's part of nature's balance.

Well, I still do think that taking care of mentally ill is, by a large part, curing the symptoms. Sure, some people just get born 'broken' and that's bad, but mostly, they break during their lives and ... Well, let's just say that crime rates increase it times of wars or crisis - kind of like the financial crisis we have now. The more people are unhappy, the more they'll act like jerks, the more people will snap in the long run.

Nirth: Speaking of psychological tests to buy a gun license, I know it isn't feasible but I think socieity would evolve to a better path by having that for every person possible.

iippo: Have you ever done psychological tests? They are quite interesting.

In Finland most men still go to army and there you have to do few simple ones. Later I applied to certain expert position in EU rapid deployment force's (EUBG), but didnt make it in the end - however there was quuuite big pile psychological tests to do and they were quite interesting. Some were done on paper and some were done in group, with couple psychologists watching how you do in group.

I dont think high intelligence will really help you on psychological tests, if they are extensive enough. As I understood it, for example when you do multiple choice tests, same kind of thing is asked several times again and again in a bit different ways - in the end if you try to "play it" and remember how you answered earlier, youre quite likely to botch it.

Ofcourse if youre going to pick option like "I want to join EUBG because" B) I love guns and shooting people - well then there hardly need for deep analyzes :)

No, I haven't actually but I'm interesting in psychology as a subject (one of the few areas I'm willing to study at a university).

I think my generation was the next last in Sweden before they canceled mandatory army service. Unfortunately I was lazy so I answered the survey they give you so they automatically disqualify you because I didn't want to join at the time.

iippo: Have you ever done psychological tests? They are quite interesting.

In Finland most men still go to army and there you have to do few simple ones. Later I applied to certain expert position in EU rapid deployment force's (EUBG), but didnt make it in the end - however there was quuuite big pile psychological tests to do and they were quite interesting. Some were done on paper and some were done in group, with couple psychologists watching how you do in group.

I dont think high intelligence will really help you on psychological tests, if they are extensive enough. As I understood it, for example when you do multiple choice tests, same kind of thing is asked several times again and again in a bit different ways - in the end if you try to "play it" and remember how you answered earlier, youre quite likely to botch it.

Ofcourse if youre going to pick option like "I want to join EUBG because" B) I love guns and shooting people - well then there hardly need for deep analyzes :)

Nirth: No, I haven't actually but I'm interesting in psychology as a subject (one of the few areas I'm willing to study at a university).

I think my generation was the next last in Sweden before they canceled mandatory army service. Unfortunately I was lazy so I answered the survey they give you so they automatically disqualify you because I didn't want to join at the time.

I would have had chance to study psychology at uni, but ended up choosing engineering instead.. fail. I do recommend :)

As for army, it was interesting experience. Everyone should go to army, to understand that "war stuff" is not at all like in video games and actually not something they would like to happen in RL.

->> Of my friends, all those who play paintball / soft air did NOT go to army, but chose civil service instead. Silly to miss all the real hardware and pay with your own money for plastic ones :D

I would say that US as a whole is an unkind and impolite society now, and that living in it can be a very alienating experience. I really don't see how a one-day virtual cease fire would fix it though. You could push to reinstate the Brady Bill, which is about the maximum you could probably get in terms of antigun legislation. But that won't fix the fact the mental healthcare has been cut past the bone and most people need private insurance for VERY expensive psych evaluations. In short, you could prevent some massacres, but not the rootlessness and mental problems that many young people feel in a society that has basically written them off in favor of expensive foreign wars and money for rich old people. Women get mentally ill too but externalize their violence less through massacres and suicide. Most women's mental health issues are a bit harder to notice as a result.

hedwards: the fact that the framers of the constitution likely never envisioned people being able to easily fire off a half dozen shots in a minute, let alone the the amount that a decent semi automatic can fire.

the 2nd amendment wasn't so we could have musket to hunt squirrels or to protect ourselves from murderers and thieves or even to have a militia for attacks on our soil to fill in gaps in the army's response time. They literally wanted us to have the ability and firepower to kill the government if it screwed enough of us badly enough. They'd probably want to let us have something silly like a jet if we could afford it. ....besides an oldtimy shotgun would be almost as effective when your targets are a group of children in an area as small as a classroom...even bumping down to archery or a woodaxe wouldn't stop crazy people from mass murder. then again the same arguments could be made for the other way round that crazy wouldn't have done so much damage if even one of the teachers that tried to stop him were armed. The bit I didn't like wasn't the idiotic stupid arguments internets make on either side of it. It was that some people seem to see this more as a useful lever to be taken advantage of than something horrible and sad. :( It'd be just as bad if it was a cartel that did it and the right imediately tried to use it to ram border laws through. It'd be slimy. Like when that rally got shot up and the dead little girl's memorial practically got turned into a campaign fundraiser and within the week you could almost forget anybody but giffords was even injured. Watched sandyhook news on abc(i usually like abc) the day it happened before they even knew if anybody was killed and the reporter must have said "we've been asked not to make this a guncontrol thing today" 10 times while they were waiting for more info before the kids were even found let alone buried. And by the time I switched to cnn they were blaming videogames and high sugar diets. Switch again and other channels like fox were also pecking around the dead looking for some way to use blame to help or harm some random pet cause(fox was that hollywood pinko liberals are all gun control but glorify the shit out of violence murder and communism. and nbc was somehow on the economy). Why can't dead children just be sad without somebody finding a way to use it to prove everybody else should have listened cause they were right? (imo guncontrol is needed as long as it doesn't work out like drm and pirates where only the people who aren't supposed to have them do, crazy can't be ignored until its too late and blamed on something else, and the founders were crazy halfdrunk smugglers who'd want us to have missles and tanks even though it'd be a bad idea.) ...but thats all irreverent. sorry offtopic.

But anyway the point of that post was that the nra was keeping quiet and that was taken as a sign of guilt by the article so an online shooter ceasefire would only be worse for games getting the blame for crazy. It sounds like something that should happen but would only go bad quickly.

yeah, it wouldn't work in practice which is why machine guns and grenades are overkill for what we could actually pull off using 2nd amendment for. But In theory yes you're supposed to be able to pull off a 2nd revolution or hold off an invading army red dawn style lol

Don't even need a government that has nukes the whiskey rebellion couldn't even pull it off(government ran up a debt with the rebellion from england and being made up mostly of pirates decided to tax dirt poor subsistence hunters living in the mountains instead of rum or gingerbeer like the initial bill asked for. Hillbillies said fuck that I can't even feed myself and tried to rebell. I think they ended up walking to the nearest courthouse and making protest signs before they all got hanged or something for "offending the dignity of this office")

edit- looked it up and no, that was farmers and it was Bacon's rebellion I was thinking of.

__________ on 2nd thought screw the new guncontrol stuff. these guys are jackasses trying to manipulate emotions and fear.

Also ignorant. Just saw the news and they're talking about how we should have restrictions we already do......how hard is it for lawmakers to know what laws already are before they try to change them? Its like when that soto myer woman thought people were being turned away from emergency rooms for not having insurance or something. Go to emergency room with an emergency you get treated they don't and can't do anything else. But she read it on the internet so it must have been true therefore they needed laws to protect you from your evil doctors.

Its our constitution and feasible or not they're trying to take it away. Its the 9/11 frenzy being levered into the patriot act all over again. Some slimeballs are just loving that this happened because its an easy powergrab.